Coming in Spectrum

Engineers and scientists are driven by incentives that are quite different from those that motivate others-salesmen, for example. Yet engineers are hardly cast from a single mold. Maccoby categorized us as four principal types: craftsmen, company men, gamesmen, and jungle fighters.1
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The 16-bit 8086 microprocessor introduces to MOS digital design some speed-up techniques well-known to computer architects. Limits on the die size barred these techniques in the past, but with new MOS processes, transistor packing densities are sufficient to use them. As a result, it is possible to design significantly improved performance into the 16-bit 8086 without relying totally on the faster...
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Most programmers at Texas Instruments feel that writing in a high-level language (HLL) is one effective way to cut costs and that this is particularly true of a language like Pascal, which lends itself to top-down structuring. When our programmers compare writing in Pascal with writing in native microprocessor assembly language, they find that programmer efficiency increases by a factor of 2.5 to ...
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Established process technology and manufacturing techniques will no longer do; the 64 kbit RAM demands a quantum jump beyond them. It is a prelude to very large-scale integration (VLSI), or the placing of more than 100000 logic gates on a single chip. Primarily facing obsolescence is the present technique of photolithography as it affects feature delineation, because the wavelength of light used t...
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The 64-kbit dynamic random-access memory may signal the end of the MOS transistor era. Established process technology and manufacturing techniques will no longer do; the new RAM demands a quantum jump beyond them. It is a prelude to very large-scale integration (VLSI), or the placing of more than 100 000 logic gates on a single chip.
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For pt.I see ibid., vol.16, no.3, p.42 (1979). To achieve VLSI means micron and submicron design rules. It means large chips containing perhaps 100000 to 500000 gates, and it means perhaps processing power of a million instructions per second on a single chip. Clearly further ground must be broken in materials, patterning, processing, layout, design and testing, as well as architecture. Requiremen...
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Developers of superbatteries of the future are aiming at a substantial increase in energy density-up to four times the energy per unit weight of the well-established, rugged, and reliable lead-acid battery. And the improvement is to be accompanied by reduced costs, while the lead-acid's long life and efficiency are retained. The energy density in present batteries limits the range of electric vehi...
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Discusses a large wind generator which joined the electric utility system in the town of Clayton, NM, and while much remains to be studied, already it is clear: the results are encouraging. Linked to the town's present system of seven diesel generators, the revolving wind blades can supply 200 kW of output power, nearly 15 percent of Clayton's total power load during off-peak periods. This result ...
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The research and development budget that President Carter has proposed for fiscal 1980 calls for a “real” increase — 4 to 5 percent — in Federal outlays for basic research, while spending for applied and developmental research would be maintained at approximately the rate of inflation.
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Six months after its revision and republication, the “Guidelines to Professional Employment for Engineers and Scientists” - a document first published and endorsed by IEEE and 27 other professional societies on Jan. 1, 1973 - has apparently won quiet acceptance by employees and employers alike. This climate of acceptance was predicted in the foreword to the new edition, which was published August ...
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